Down by the lake, Hussein Al-Doseri is beaming. “Before all this, there were no services here—no trails, no routes. Now it’s easy.”
An athletic 30-something in a white T-shirt and wraparound sunglasses, Al-Doseri stretches his arms wide toward the landscape of trees and open water that forms Wadi Hanifah, shimmering amid a dusty industrial suburb in south Riyadh.
Treated for years as a dump and a sewer, the wadi has been the focus of a 10-year-long restoration project. In November 2010, it became one of the few environmental engineering projects to win an Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and it has won over plenty of fans in the Saudi capital.
“I come here all the time, day and night,” grins Al-Doseri. “It makes me happy, to relax and spend time with my family by the water. It feels like the opposite of Riyadh. Nowadays, if I want to meet friends, I tell them: ‘To the lake!'”
Ismailimail 